Fear of snakes runs in the human family

As garden-variety phobias go, the deep-seated fear of snakes has a biblical proportion.

Not for nothing did Satan take the form of a smooth-talking serpent to pitch apples.

I confess, I’m insanely afraid of slithering creatures, from garters to diamondbacks. I’d rather pet a Bengal tiger than handle a snake.

The instinct to run from snakes runs deep in the family DNA.

Though my mother grew up on a ranch in the Imperial Valley, far from the Garden of Eden, she’d blanch at the mere mention of a snake — and flee in terror at the sight of one.

I inherited the bloodcurdling horror of snakes through my mother’s milk.

Anthropologists speculate that primates — and primitive Homo sapiens — may have owed their survival to eyes sharpened by healthy horror of the legless monsters. Those who didn’t pay attention to the snakes in the grass did not live to pass on their heedless genes.

In contemporary urban settings, however, the primordial guard surely can be let down, right?

When you’re walking shortly after sunset on a suburban Oceanside sidewalk with your infant daughter in a stroller, surely you can be forgiven for failing to keep your eyes trained on the ground for rattlesnakes, correct?

Well, in a word, no.

The traumatic rattlesnake bite suffered last weekend by Brooke O’Neill, an Orange County art teacher who lives in Oceanside, teaches two lessons to the urban ophidiophobe.

First, it’s still a jungle out there no matter how much concrete and asphalt we lay down.

For any number of reasons, rattlesnakes can migrate into suburbia. As in a recurring nightmare, they can coil up — and strike — almost anywhere. No matter where we are, don’t think streetscape. Think chaparral. Keep your eyes peeled — and your ears tuned to hissing rattles.

Second, if the terror strikes a loved one, don’t go John Wayne. Don’t imagine you’re in the Wild West and you must do something heroic.

“I honestly thought that I was going to lose my wife and the mother of my child in that instant,” Brian O’Neill told U-T reporter Nathan Scharn. “And I felt completely powerless.”

In fact, Brian would have done well to have acted upon his sense of powerlessness.

Instead, relying on images from countless Western movies, he tried sucking out the venom.

In reality, this frontier form of first-aid is as potentially counterproductive as cutting between the fang marks with a dirty knife and plying the victim with whiskey.

As he readily admits, Brian made a dangerous situation more dangerous — and could have made himself sick if he’d had cuts in his mouth.

The best course of action, as impotent as it may seem, is to keep the victim in a state of Zen-like calm, keep the bite below the heart, and get to a hospital pronto.

And one more thing. If possible, take a picture of the snake. It helps doctors with selecting the right antivenin (often called antivenom).

Rattlesnake bites are fairly common — about 7,000 to 8,000 a year in the United States — but they’re rarely fatal, maybe a handful a year.

In reality, bee stings and lightning kill more people.

Nevertheless, the silence in my alley for the last year serves as a subliminal reminder that rattlesnakes can kill.

For years, I grew accustomed to hearing the productive sound of woodworking from a neighbor’s garage on the other side of the alley in Bird Rock.

Every now and then, I’d exchange greetings with Skip Price, a retired guy who looked a little like Hemingway, while I was hitting tennis balls for our golden retriever. We’d chat a little about dogs and stuff.

Last October, Price, 67, died almost immediately after being bitten by a large rattlesnake while wading through Boulder Creek, west of Lake Cuyamaca. Price was part of a trout project with five other volunteers from the Golden State Flycasters, a club Price served as vice president.

Shortly after he was bitten in the ankle, Price lost consciousness and his heart stopped.

A lot of good works died with him. He taught fly-fishing to Boy Scouts as well as wounded veterans. A cool guy.

On July 4, his relatives walked in the local parade with T-shirts honoring his rich, but too short, life. Price’s wife, Charlene, told me about the upbeat family tribute as I shot baskets in the alley with my 3-year-old grandson.

Life does go on. And so do millions and millions of snakes, both in the wild and in the imagination.

No matter how much I know that snakes play a crucial role in the ecological scheme of things, I’m akin to Indiana Jones, the adventurer who can’t believe a friend has brought his pet serpent on the plane: